


Three Sentence Ficlets (Inception)

by Elizabeth Culmer (edenfalling)



Category: Inception (2010), The Sandman (Comics)
Genre: 3 Sentence Ficathon, Bargaining, Canonical Character Death, Choices, Crossovers & Fandom Fusions, Double Drabble, Dreams, Dreamsharing, F/M, Fluff, Gen, Greek Mythology - Freeform, Implied/Referenced Gore, Kissing in the Rain, Prompt Fic, Rain, Stargazing, Triple Drabble, Umbrellas, Wanderlust, Worldbuilding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-07
Updated: 2017-12-23
Packaged: 2018-05-05 13:26:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 1,271
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5376911
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/edenfalling/pseuds/Elizabeth%20Culmer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tiny ficlets written for various iterations of the Three Sentence Ficathon.</p><p><b>1)</b> What's happy about rain? <b>2)</b> Ariadne and Arthur flirt in an imaginary planetarium. <b>3)</b> When she dies, Mal steps sideways into the Dreaming. <b>4)</b> Ariadne receives Dream's permission to work with the fabric of his realm. <b>5)</b> At the heart of every person's mind is a guardian, territorial and feral. <b>6)</b> Arthur and Ariadne make travel plans.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. like silence, but not empty

**Author's Note:**

  * For [kaminagi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kaminagi/gifts).



> Yes, I am aware that not all of these are exactly three sentences. (Some are, however, strict form double or triple drabbles, because why not. *grin*)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Written 12/1/15 for an anon, in response to the prompt: [Inception, Arthur/Ariadne, _they love it when it rains, because they can share an umbrella_](http://caramelsilver.livejournal.com/150194.html?thread=4703666#t4703666).

"I designed a happy childhood memory," Ariadne said, staring up at the sodden sky of their latest mark's subconscious with a disgruntled expression; "What's happy about rain?"

Arthur checked his watch -- nearly thirty minutes before they needed to meet Eames outside the mark's hometown library; he could spare a handful for indulgence -- and retrieved a previously non-existent umbrella from his satchel. He shook it open, then wrapped his arm around Ariadne's shoulder and leaned in for a kiss when she joined him under its shelter; "I can think of a few things," he said as the rain fell in a curtain of silver streaks and white noise around the umbrella's rim, closing them into a tiny private world where only they were real.

Ariadne smiled.


	2. written on the arched sky

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Written 12/5/16 for **anonymous** , in response to the prompt: [Inception, Arthur/Ariadne, stargazing](http://caramelsilver.livejournal.com/151259.html?thread=5396699#t5396699).

Their latest job involved a maze in a planetarium ("Why a planetarium?" Ariadne had asked, to which Eames had smiled annoyingly and said, "A memory of first loves fumbling illicitly in the dark, sweetheart, makes an excellent atmosphere for digging out any current sexual indiscretions -- and don't ask me how I know the mark brought her boy here while she was meant to be running the projector; a man needs a few secrets, after all.") and Arthur had insisted on being the dreamer once he'd heard the rough draft of Eames and Ariadne's extraction plan.

When she slipped into the dream maze to see if it needed any last minute adjustments and saw the star projections Arthur had imagined, which he was sliding smoothly around the domed projection field as a narrator explained the reason different stars were visible in different seasons or at different latitudes, Ariadne realized why; "I could never hold all that steady enough to convince somebody who knows what it ought to look like; how are you managing?" she asked as she wrapped her arms around his waist; "Are there some illicit planetarium escapades in _your_ past that I should know about?"

Arthur tugged her around until they were face to face, the glow of the projector striking gleams from his hair and casting his face in an otherworldly light, and said, halfway between wry and anticipatory, "It's possible there might have been, but let me make a suggestion: we have a subjective half hour before the dose runs out; instead of making me relive my embarrassing youth, wouldn't you rather try topping the memory?"


	3. and, in parting from you now

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Written 12/7/16 for [silvr_dagger](http://silvr_dagger.livejournal.com), in response to the prompt: [Inception, Mal & or / any, _all that we see or seem_](http://caramelsilver.livejournal.com/151259.html?thread=5646043#t5646043).

"Hello, Mal," a voice says as she dies, and suddenly the pain is... not gone, precisely, but held aside for a moment, long enough for a conversation and a choice: to move on to wherever souls go when their mortal bodies shatter, or to step sideways and serve as consultant and artist for a world she's seen flickering at the edges of her own, magic curled warily around newfangled science, irrationality woven for its own sake according to its own rules.

Dom still lives; she sees him screaming silently down from the hotel window, eyes wild and hand outstretched as if he could reel back time with only his fingers and his fear; he will eat his own heart with guilt and grief.

"You will play the role that is given to you," the Dream King warns, "and it may not be as his protector," but the choice is no choice at all, and he pays her the respect of assuming she knows her own mind and hushes the raven at his shoulder when it opens its beak to attempt dissuasion; and so Mal takes her new lord's colorless hand and gives the whole of herself over to dreams forever.


	4. for thine is the kingdom

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Written 12/7/16 for [silvr_dagger](http://silvr_dagger.livejournal.com), in response to the prompt: [Inception/Sandman crossover, Ariadne & Morpheus or Daniel, _forgive us our trespasses_](http://caramelsilver.livejournal.com/151259.html?thread=5646299#t5646299), written 12/7/16

"Do you mind that we grab pieces of your realm and twist them around for mercenary purposes?" Ariadne asks as she and the pale stranger sit on the tattered, rose-gold edge of a cloud and watch a flock of bats with paint rollers slap a Van Gogh sunset across the scaffolded sky; "I mean, we love your world -- I've never met anyone in dreamwork who wasn't at least halfway addicted to creating a dozen new impossible things on each new job, no matter how down-to-earth they try to present themselves -- but even so, it seems rude and I'm sorry that I can't honestly promise I'd stop if you asked."

"You tell stories, which are always and ever their own justification," the pale stranger says; "I will make the same bargain with you that I have made with all those in your trade: so long as you bring no dreams physically into the waking world--" ("I don't think the PASIV works that way," Ariadne says) "--or humans physically into my realm--" ("I _really_ don't think the PASIV works that way," Ariadne says, before adding, _sotto voce_ , "more's the pity") "--then I have no immediate quarrel with you, and will inform you before taking hostile action should you ever infringe on the natural operation of my realm and the minds temporarily under my care; do you accept those terms?"

"I do, and thank you, your majesty," Ariadne says, and as the dream world fades around her, washed away by the warmth of morning light across her pillow, the scent of Yusuf frying eggs in the kitchen, and the sound of Arthur and Eames arguing cheerfully over their next job options, she hopes her training will let her remember more than a melancholy smile and a fading sense of absolution when she wakes.


	5. no morality by instinct

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Written 1/4/17 for [silvr_dagger](http://silvr_dagger.livejournal.com), in response to the prompt: [Inception, Ariadne / or & any, minotaur](http://caramelsilver.livejournal.com/151259.html?thread=5645787#t5645787).

At the heart of every person's mind is a guardian, territorial and feral, that exacts repayment in blood and pain for all attempted intrusions; they can be evaded, confused, and with time and practice soothed to sleep, but they are never truly tamed; even the people a dreamer loves and trusts the most can still be ripped apart if they grow careless and startle the beast awake.

"Like a minotaur, a proper flesh-eater both maddened and cunning, sent to humble those who grow too proud of their power and cleverness and forget to observe the appointed rituals," Eames says with a careless smile, "and you a combination of Daedalus and your own lovely namesake, both to build the maze that traps the monster and to spin the thread that guides us safely through."

"Ah, the benefits of a classical education," Ariadne says wryly, watching the slow and suspicious patrol of the squirrels and songbirds that populate the wilderness she's built in Eames's mind, and wonders whether, when Arthur begins testing her rough-draft maze for flaws, she'll have time to shoot herself awake before she learns what it feels like to die sliced apart by a thousand tiny claws and beaks.


	6. each day a new and different sun

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Written 12/8/17 for anonymous, in response to the prompt: [Inception, Ariadne/Arthur, _Two drifters, off to see the world_](https://caramelsilver.livejournal.com/151620.html?thread=5824580#t5824580).

"Columbia or Madagascar?" Arthur asks as he leans over Ariadne's drafting table and obscures her Escher-inspired garden maze (nothing serious, just keeping her hand in between jobs) with his forearms, sleeves shoved carelessly upward to reveal tantalizing swathes of skin.

Ariadne taps her pencil against his knuckles as she considers -- they _have_ been spending a lot of time in Paris this year, and while it's nice to have somewhere to come home to, she's been getting restless and ready for a change -- but she doesn't particularly care what horizon they travel toward so long as they pick up and _go_ ; and so she shrugs and says, "Which job has more interesting details, more functional teammates, and less chance of us getting shot?"

Arthur blinks, and then smiles: "I won't presume to judge what you'd find most interesting, but I think our chances of getting shot or stuck with incompetent coworkers are fairly low in both cases, because I was actually proposing a vacation; we can certainly afford it, and after all, we never did finish our honeymoon."


End file.
